Jury selected in Springfield church arson trial

SPRINGFIELD – There has likely been no greater celebration in U.S. District Court over the impaneling of a single juror.

But as 16 prospective panelists for the last seat in a 12-member jury for a high-profile church arson case came and went on Wednesday, the groans of members of the jury pool grew louder and louder.

“Take one for the team!” one woman in the gallery finally blurted out as another candidate approached the jury box for vetting and the number of rejects grew and grew.

It seemed juror No. 10 (denoting the 10th seat in the jury box) would never come.

Over three days in federal court, a jury pool of around 140 was culled down to sit on the upcoming trial of Michael F. Jacques Jr. starting March 21. Jacques, 26, was one of three men charged with a hate crime in connection with allegedly torching the predominantly black Macedonia Church of God in Christ hours after President Barack Obama was elected in 2008.

His co-defendants, Thomas A. Gleason Jr., 24, and Benjamin F. Haskell, 24, also white men, already pleaded guilty to dousing the partially constructed church with gasoline and setting it ablaze in the middle of the night after Obama clinched the presidency.

Haskell is serving a nine-year sentence in a federal prison in West Virginia; Gleason is scheduled to testify against Jacques at trial and is awaiting sentencing.

For his part, Jacques has denied involvement in the fire and has argued state police and the FBI squeezed a false confession out of him over a grueling, seven-hour interview while he was in the throes of Percocet withdrawal.

Jury selection for the case – which drew national attention – began Monday morning with prospective members filling out standard questionnaires over two days. On Wednesday, the remaining candidates answered questions posed by U.S. District Judge Michael A. Ponsor, who cleared them initially with a series of questions about political, racial and social biases, in part.

However, attorneys on both sides then had opportunities to reject them as jurors, as is customary in the selection process.

The first 11 were seated in brisk fashion, with five men and six women impaneled in just over three hours – then, came the curse of seat No. 10.

“Every trial has a hot seat and number 10 appears to be ours,” Ponsor joked.

After 16 men and women, young and old, were rejected for reasons that weren’t clear to the public as lawyers’ discussions took place at sidebar, a female administrative assistant from a local college finally grabbed the spot.